


Accidental On-Purpose

by LadyNimrodel



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Cultural Differences, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4216815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNimrodel/pseuds/LadyNimrodel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was not how Thorin planned to propose</p>
            </blockquote>





	Accidental On-Purpose

**Author's Note:**

> I was prompted on tumblr to write a drabble/ficlet for "It wasn't supposed to happen like that". Also, my little celebration fic for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. 
> 
> Love always wins. <3

“I did some asking around,” Thorin says hesitantly, shuffling his shoe against the flagstones of the walkway. Bilbo breathes out a lungful of smoke and eyes his dwarf with curiosity. Thorin is acting like he has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar (which would not be the first time, though he still insists on blaming it on Primula’s boy, Frodo). 

“About what, love?” Bilbo asks mildly when Thorin does not continue. There is more shuffling and a little lip biting before the dwarf seats himself on the bench gingerly beside him. 

“The flowers I gave you. The…the Lily of the Valley?” Bilbo nods at the question. He wears a bunch now, tucked into his lapel and the rest sit proudly in a vase in the middle of his kitchen table, “I saw your reaction. It was not like all the other times I have brought you some flowers…And the only thing this time that was different were the flowers themselves…” he bites off again, face flushed and eyes darting away, “When I asked Bell, she told me Lily of the Valley are given as a proposal. You accepted them…you were so happy and I had no idea…” Bilbo reaches out, smooths his hand gently down Thorin’s cheek. 

“Thorin, you could not have known what they meant. I knew that when I took them,” Bilbo says gently because he does not like seeing Thorin upset and flustered.He had been happy when Thorin shyly handed them to him this morning. But he had also known that, not being Shire-raised, Thorin would not know that by handing Bilbo a handful of the little white, bell-shaped flowers, he had, by Shire standards, proposed. The dwarf shakes his head, dark hair falling about his face in a silvery-black wave. 

“No, I have been living in the Shire long enough to know better by now,” he snarls, visibly angry at himself. 

“My love.” Bilbo halts him before the self-loathing can become a dark, consuming thing like it sometimes does. His fingers rub through Thorin’s beard, longer now, with three silver beads shining in its dark mass, “Don’t do that to yourself, really. I took them for what they were; a token of your affection and nothing more,” Thorin groans, a low, sad sound and catches Bilbo’s hand in both of his own. 

“No, I’m not.” he halts. Takes a breath, “I am not angry because I didn’t know. I just…when I proposed to you, it was not supposed to happen like that,” his eyes are bright when they meet Bilbo’s, the blue of them heightened by the red flush burning on his cheeks. 

Bilbo gapes at him, breath frozen in his chest. 

He thinks, at first, he heard wrong. 

“What?” he finally manages to breathe, voice a weak, shaky thing. Thorin looks at him for a long moment, face all angles in the sunlight and drawn into serious lines. Then he reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small, exquisitely carved wooden box. 

“I’ve been working on this for a long time,” he mutters as he pushes the box into Bilbo’s hand, “Too long. I hope that it is…” he stops, swallows and looks at his hands as they fiddle in his lap. 

But Bilbo is staring at the box, a ringing in his ears and his heart racing anxiously in his chest, making him feel hot all over. When he opens the box, held together on one side by clever little springs, he finds a ring, gleaming gently upon a tiny cushion of blue velvet.

It is a beautiful thing, thin, interwoven threads of silver and reddish-gold curling together in tiny, perfect geometric patterns. There is no stone but it does not need one. The band is complex yet to anyone not looking closely, it would look a simple thing. He barely breathes as he reaches into the box and pulls it out, turning it around and around in his fingers to admire it. He has never seen the like, even when he was in Erebor or among the elves. And, when he slides it onto his finger, the second to last on his left hand, it fits perfectly. 

When he lifts his stinging eyes to Thorin, it is to find he is being watched carefully and he can see how nervous the dwarf is by the way his hands twist together. 

“Yes,” he breathes, joy bursting inside of him, filling him with brilliant light, “Yes, Thorin Oakenshield, I will marry you,” there is a moment of stillness when Thorin just stares at him, eyes wide. Then his face bursts into a joyous grin, a throaty laugh breaking the silence. Bilbo laughs with him, his chest feeling bubbly and giddy, shouting when he is swept right off the bench and swung around in Thorin’s arms. 

He sees the ring on his finger glinting in the sunlight, a promise. A future with his beloved. 

When Thorin stops spinning him, he clutches the dwarf tight, arms around his broad shoulders and foreheads pressed together. 

“You are not disappointed?” it takes Bilbo a minute to realize Thorin is asking about the way he went about the proposal and he smiles, kisses joy against Thorin’s mouth. 

“My love, I would not have it any other way,” and their next kiss is long and slow and full of promise. 

end

**Author's Note:**

> and they lived happily together, to the end of their days ;)


End file.
